Bonnie Brooks is singing along to the Black Eyed Peas

Bonnie Brooks is singing along to the Black Eyed Peas

Bonnie Brooks with Sarah Jessica Parker (Image: George Pimentel)

Bonnie Brooks, president and CEO of The Bay, is no stranger to the media, but we’re always hearing the same stuff about her: she’s from London, she worked in Hong Kong for retail giant Lane Crawford, and she is going to revitalize The Bay. But for some reason, the Globe and Mail’s auto section was able to draw out some details we hadn’t read before. Here’s four things we learned:

She should listen to the radio:
On Brooks’s playlist right now are the Black Eyed Peas “I Gotta Feeling” (it brings back memories of Olympic hockey games) and Eric Clapton’s “Change The World” (for empowerment). To listen to these jams, she uses an iPod, but she could just as easily flip to any radio station to hear either ad nauseum.

She likes the slow way:
Rather than take the 400 up to her cottage on Lake Simcoe, Brooks takes the 404 and back roads, so she can be alone and “go at my own speed and play music really loud.” Strange, we always thought the worst part of the cottage weekend was that whole driving nuisance.

She’s a foodie:
Brooks loves to go to the Niagara region to buy wine from small vineyards and pick up specialty cheeses and fruits in the Prince Edward Country area. So those “there’s no place like this” Ontario commercials have worked.

She has more than one iPod for driving:
Bonnie has “special iPods that are just for driving with a pretty eclectic mix from rock to classical.” Girl must love her music, because a regular iPod comes with 160GB of storage space. That’s more than enough for every Black Eyed Peas song (and remix) in existence.

What Bonnie Brooks listens to in the car [Globe and Mail]